The ANC's integrity management system which seems to have supplanted its disciplinary committee-driven management of membership integrity has to date proven to be effective to the extent that it remains supported. The new system is based on members volunteering themselves into the process and soliciting the advice of the integrity committee on the desirability of continuing in a deployment post despite putting the ANC into disrepute. In fact, the integrity committee has assumed the difficult task of curating the reputation of the ANC vis-a-viz questionable actions of its members. Members would, as a recommendation of the integrity commission, be expected to voluntarily step aside, or the organization might obligate such a member to do so.
The implementation of the system has to date been effective, it claims the SG of the ANC as one of whom his suspension represents its efficiency, rightly or wrongly. The perception that the integrity management mechanism is selectively applied, correct or otherwise, has become one of its liabilities and thus cause for its rejection by a coterie of members that are in one solidarity form or another with its victims. As a result, the system is now put on notice for a consequential review and renewal at the next policy conference and national elective conference, and indications are that it is gone.
A casual trip into the NEC of the ANC would lead you to members that survived the career-ending character of the integrity management system. It follows therefore that the system is supportive of the anti-corruption leadership posture President Ramaphosa took. His targeting of state capture and corruption as the platform upon which his term would essentially be defined has attracted the wrath of those that understood their membership of the ANC as a conduit to the use of state resources.
As a manifestation of the rejection of the system, South Africa saw the election into the office of individuals that had either stepped aside or are at variance with the law, some with dockets ready for processing. This repudiation of the system by dominant coalitions, or factions, inside the ANC, has made the system a definite target of overhaul at the 55th National Conference. In fact, this overhaul can, arguably, forestall the worst effects of factionalism.
This movement to do away with the system can, arguably, be ascribed to a need to protect those candidates the ANC would not allow standing as candidates to lead it. In fact, the system in supporting the Ramaphosa anti-corruption trajectory positions those that are anti it to be fishers of corruption opportunities. This is notwithstanding it being essentially about removing those that are charged for corruption-related crimes, most of whom the theory and narrative see as belonging to the RET faction.
The Phala Phala farm incident with allegations of money laundering and non declaring of foreign currency-denominated cash has created new calls for the President to go through the integrity management system he presided over its relative efficiency. The President has already volunteered himself to the process. Should the President be charged with the allegations and a trial starts, the unintended consequences of the anti-step aside movement might well be to (the less expected) advantage of President Ramaphosa.
The resultant alternative will exonerate earlier victims of the system and beneficiaries of its efficacy, thus expunging Ramaphosa out of the need to remove him from the Presidency as RET forces consolidate around a process to get the integrity committee to ask him to step aside.
These dramatic shifts in the in-ANC balance of forces might occasion a context where CR22 forces problematize the integrity management system. The anti-graft objects of the system will be overshadowed by the power interests of the warring factions. Politics being a trade whose currency is interests, and the fact that a vocation in politics will in almost all instances pursue the self-interests of politicians, the integrity management system will be a victim of the emerging palace fights. The current in-ANC integrity crisis has refocused society's attention on one dominant governing party risks, forcing a reckoning between tomorrow’s integrity-centric ambitions of society and today’s political power needs, and offering a preview of the tumultuous elective conference era ahead. How the ANC responds to these challenges, will shape the envisaged new order for decades to come.
The dual priorities of saving the country from capture by ruthless politicians and oligarchs, and that of saving the hope against corruption which Ramaphosa has thus far projected himself as is now poised to reshape the path to building an integrity-centric state capable of being trusted by society. Leaders of the ANC will, especially in an election year, start to be inward-looking as to how the Phala Phala error of judgment by the President benefits their factional interests. New coalitions, that might be dangerously based on a retreat by the Ramaphosa faction on being frontal against corruption will emerge as the conference approaches. New fragmentations in the criminal justice system will delay the anti-graft objects the country has set for itself.
Fortunately for South Africa the institutional provisions by the Constitution to deal with graft have in the past decade found favor with members of the ANC, and politicians in general. Throughout most of its recorded history, what the ANC has done with the integrity management system is not occupying itself with a range of threats that the integrity of its members posed to its continued ability to maintain voter support. Truth is, nothing has so damaged the credibility of the ANC amongst voting citizens as the decay of the integrity of its leadership and deployees. Given the decline of its systems to be decisive on member malfeasance beyond outsourcing to an otherwise dysfunctional criminal justice system, ANC members (and indeed society) might have to make wrenching choices between saving the nation and their nostalgia about the ANC's role in the anti-apartheid struggle.
The basic reason for the growing attitude from within members of the ANC to choose the nation that their 'political tribe', lies in their prioritization of a better for posterity. The good thing about such a prioritization is that it is shared by the population and the country's elites. Instead of facing popular unrest resulting from a liquidated trust in the current leadership, and lost hope or resistant to anything that is suggested by the ANC, the choice of a path that does not include it is an inevitability they cannot avoid.
Due to the recent historical awareness of society, and ANC members in particular, about corruption and state capture, the possibility of the integrity management system collapsing at the altar of saving Ramaphosa and by extension the rest of the lot, will proffer an opportunity for the nation to take matters about its destiny into its hands. Whilst distancing from the ANC by society will not guarantee the complete eradication of corruption, it may act as an accelerant of broader societal entrenchment of integrity, and placing a burden on citizens to obligate civilian institutions to be less accommodating to leaders that are in variance to a value system under construction. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️ku haba ku tshembeka
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